


When The Light Hit The Darkness

by LookingForDroids



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Family, Ficlet, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27091897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids
Summary: Young Signless knows more about the world – and what his mother is willing to do to protect him – than she realizes.
Kudos: 14





	When The Light Hit The Darkness

Your mother is frightened.

There have been drones in the air all day and all night, and patrols on the roads hunting someone. You’re not sure who. The little wild girl who crouches at your side, maybe, quick with her claws and always watching for enemies. You don’t think it’s you, but if they catch you, that won’t matter. 

“Hide here,” she says, pulling the snuggleplane a little further over both of you. It’s camouflage – earth-colored cloth thatched with twigs and leaves, with concealed holes to let the air in and let you look out. She spent nights stitching it together, back when you were littler and too much of a dumb wiggler to understand why. Now, she takes your face between her palms, brushes your hair back, and says, “I’m just going to go talk to them, see if they’ll let us through the pass. If I don’t return, wait until the pink moon is past that second star, then go.”

She turns to the wild girl, fusses a little over her tangled hair and the healing bruises on her face, and says, “If I don’t return, protect him.”

The girl hasn’t told you her name yet, or even spoken at all, but she grabs your frond and holds it tightly, and nods like she’s accepting a solemn duty. You let her lean against you, even though you’re not used to her yet and she‘s got a wild animal smell clinging to her clothes, and both of you hide together in your small, warm space. You don’t cry at all, but your throat is tight and your breath sounds too loud in your own ears as you watch your mother vanish into the woods, and you’re glad you’re not all alone.

When the pink moon is a quarter of the way to the second star, she returns. You see her like a ghost-light moving between the trees, and the wild girl hisses through bared teeth and tries to put herself in front of you, until you nudge her with your shoulder and whisper, “It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s only mom.”

It’s only mom, and she’s OK, and you don’t have to wait for the moon to get high enough before you run away without her. (You wouldn’t. You’d go looking, and you bet the wild girl would help.) As soon as she’s close enough to give the safe signal, you throw off the snuggleplane and run towards her, and she catches you up in her arms and spins you around like you weigh nothing at all.

“Come on, you two,” she says. “The pass is clear, but we need to move fast.”

There’s a piece of dark blue cloth torn into strips and wrapped around her upper arm, but the injury doesn’t seem to bother her. There’s also a drop of indigo blood at the corner of her mouth, and you think if she knew you could see it, that might bother her more.

It bothers you, kind of, but not because you’re scared. You’re almost four sweeps old, and when your daymares have monsters in them, they have the spiky carapaces of Imperial drones, and sometimes uniforms like the one your mother’s bandage was torn from. Rainbow drinkers aren’t scary. You just wish you could protect her too. You wish there was another way.

Your mother lifts you in the crook of one elbow, and the wild girl clings to her back with the camouflage snuggleplane wrapped around her, and as she holds you tight against her thorax, you can feel her bloodpusher beating like she’s still not done being alive or afraid. As she runs for the pass, through lashing branches and over dangerous open ground, you think it’s time you let her know that you’re not a wiggler, and you’re not stupid, and she doesn’t have to lie to you any longer.

And when you’re through the pass and far away, and the green moon is just past the morning star, you leave the wild girl sleeping in the cave she found for shelter, and sit down at your mother’s side. She isn’t glowing now, which means you’re safe from everything but the sun on the horizon.

“They didn’t want to talk, did they?” you say quietly. 

“No,” she says. “They didn’t.” 

She gives you her comforting smile, the white points of her fangs peeking sharp over closed lips, but there’s something sad hovering around the corners of her mouth that tells you she was hoping too.

You duck beneath her arm for a hug, and say, “Maybe one day they will.”


End file.
